I drove home yesterday right down the street beside the new World War II Memorial. Despite all the screaming and yelling about “destroying” the character of the Mall, I think that this memorial is gorgeous, well-placed, and long overdue.
It doesn’t disrupt the view at all, and it brought a desperately needed renovation of that segment of the Mall, which had been a stagnant, disused fountain for years. The Rainbow Pool area of the Mall had been neglected for years, a barren area along a street, which is itself a barrier and interruption in the Mall.
Why did it take so long to memorialize the sacrifices of World War II? Why was there a Vietnam Memorial decades earlier? We already had memorials to FDR and an airport named after Reagan, so what’s the deal?
It’s about time, and it’s worthy of the wait. It evokes the era in it’s imagery and design. It brings new class to the Mall, and it’s structure frames the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument without getting in the way.
